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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Today's takedown thoughts

I'm starting to feel better about these takedown classes. I'm so bad at them that its very easy to see any kind of improvement.

A few examples:

Sure, he knocked me over, but I managed to pull guard instead of ending up in side control.

Ok, so maybe the nice blue belt let me set up whatever takedown I wanted, but my timing was much better this time, I could feel it.

I actually took a second to stop and breathe instead of my usual hyper tense state of near panic

Now that we've defined some positive space, its time for me to take a serious look at a couple of things for next time.

First, whatever I did that landed me in the receiving end of a piledriver was not good. I don't know what was worse - that I didn't take any action to avoid it or that once caught I had a couple of scary seconds to contemplate if I knew how to not get dropped on my head and the only thing I could come up with was "trust my training partner not to drop me on my head". Though true, it was also completely useless. Funny, though.

Second, I seriously need to work on my endurance outside of training. Sure, I would like to be stronger too, but I can deal with being weaker by applying better technique and timing, but I need to survive longer. (Note: I know better technique helps here too, but I'm going to attack this problem from multiple directions) I am really starting to hate the feeling that an opportunity opened up and I missed it because I have reached a level of exhaustion that makes every movement - hell, even every thought - like trying to walk through water.

EDIT: I forgot to mention it, but I need to remember it to motivate me later. Someone said I looked like a whipped puppy towards the end of class. In my imagination, that's pretty close to how I felt. This is not a good feeling. This is why I need more endurance.

This will require better time management on my part. Story of my life. Time to set some goals.

1. I want to add to my schedule (somehow) one session at the gym and two long jogs a week.

2. EAT. SOMETHING. Really, this is getting ridiculous. I don't care so much if I try to live on egg whites, fresh fruit, almond milk and bread as long as I eat enough of it to keep going.

Thought I would end this rambling mess with another random thought I had today. I was trying to show a friend this really cool armbar to triangle transition and I had it WRONG. FAIL. Yet it only took us about a minute to figure out the one step I had backwards and then we practiced it right. I think its a small step in the right direction that we could look at a technique and figure out what was off about it. At least we didn't just try and do it wrong over and over. That said, I'll try and know what I'm talking about in the future. Promise.